Indiana's Will Sheehey put up a shot over Ohio State's Aaron Craft in the first half of their game Thursday, March 5, 2012 at Assembly Hall. / Matt Kryger / The Star

Before you flood my in-box with a bunch of angry emails and blow up my Twitter account, I understand, it would be great and I know they’re going to do everything imaginable to win a title they’ve never won.

That much is evident. But here’s the truth, too: It’s irrelevant.

It’s irrelevant for IU to do anything more than win its opening game Friday against Illinois, and even that’s an arguable point.

I fell 10 credits short of a bracketology degree — the math requirements got me — but The Indianapolis Star’s bracketologist, Shelby Mast, believes IU is 95 percent guaranteed to get the No. 1 seed in the Midwest no matter what happens this week at United Center.

But it’s not a 100 percent dead-lock guarantee. Which makes today’s game matter.

“If they (the Hoosiers) happen to lose, this puts them in a precarious position, because they will have no more opportunities to post big wins where the other schools mentioned will more than likely have that chance,’’ Mast wrote in The Star. “If Louisville, Michigan, Kansas and/or Miami win their conference tournaments, beating good teams along the way, this will give those teams two more wins against top RPI-ranked teams. In this situation, IU’s regular season would be good enough to get a (No.) 1-seed, but I can see them falling to a 2-seed as well.’’

History tells us it’s not necessary for IU to win this conference tournament title to win the national title.

Since 2000, eight of 13 national champions have won their league tournament; five have not — specifically Kentucky last year (John Calipari hates the league tournament), North Carolina in 2009, North Carolina in 2005, Syracuse in 2003 and the 2002 Maryland team that beat IU in the national title game.

Truth is, for a lot of NCAA-bound teams, the postseason conference tournaments are nothing more than a conference money grab that have little to do with basketball.

“You’re playing three games in three days. It doesn’t prepare you for anything,’’ Calipari said last year before Kentucky was upset by Vanderbilt in the SEC tournament final. “Maybe one team can play in (to the NCAA tournament). They had all season to play in.’’

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(I’m guessing Cal’s take on the conference tournament is a little different this season.)

“It’s what it is,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said a couple of years ago. “I said it’s for money, said it’s the biggest cocktail party. It’s still a party; I don’t care what anybody says. It’s a party to make money ... I loved it as a fan, I don’t love it as much as a coach with the attention the other tournament gets and the emphasis we try and put on it.’’

For some of those postseason tournament losers, the wake-up call proved helpful and saved the team’s legs for the NCAA tournament.

At the same time, the conference tournament gives teams a chance to experience tournament play, to play a lot of games in a very short amount of time, and to do so on a neutral court.

So is it better for IU to win the Big Ten title or at least reach Sunday’s finale, or is it better to go home by, say, Saturday?

I’ll take the former, for a couple of reasons:

One, the Hoosiers need to get on a roll, a tournament roll. If Jordan Morgan’s shot falls into the basket instead of falling off the rim, they’re losers of three of their past four. They’re that close to being asked, “What’s going on with these guys?’’

Two, IU has never won the Big Ten tournament. “That’s something I didn’t know,’’ IU coach Tom Crean said when a reporter brought it up the other day. Well, now he knows. If ever there was a time to finally win one, it’s now.

Three, there’s no fatigue issue. Or at least there shouldn’t be. Crean started tapering back practices in January — “the earliest we’ve ever done it as a staff’’ — and there’s no concern that a long conference tournament run will sap the Hoosiers’ energy. Anyway, three games in three days? As Cody Zeller said the other day, these kids are used to playing two, three, even four games a day on the AAU circuit.

The best news for IU right now is it gets to play Illinois, a team that stunned the Hoosiers in Champaign earlier this season. The Hoosiers haven’t shown an inclination to look past lesser opponents all year, but to the extent human nature plays a role in basketball, there’s absolutely no chance they’ll be dismissive of the “hometown’’ Illini.

The Hoosiers have come this far, come from the college basketball graveyard to write one of the most compelling come-from-nowhere stories in recent history. Why not get a little greedy?

Big picture: Winning this tournament means nothing.

But to the players and coaches and fans who have stuck by the IU program through the lean times, it means plenty.